Frequently Asked Rogue Questions

I thought it would be a good idea to consolidate some of the more common rogue questions. There have been a few duplicate threads lately, so I was hoping to make a one-stop post that may answer several of the more common Rogue questions. I’ll post what information I find to be the consensus viewpoint, and I’ll edit this post with any appropriate additions/revisions. Note- I’m by no means a pro rogue, so if anyone sees any inaccuracies, let me know and I can modify this post.

Alliance-
Human - The overwhelming favorite here is human. The second trinket slot has a lot of additional stats, whether it be tons of agility or procs from PVE trinkets, or more resilience + another agility proc or on-use agility pvp trinket (two on-use agility is likely the better selection, as you can sync your agility bonus with all of your shadow dances via macros).

Night Elf – Night elves also have a strong racial for rogues. Shadowmeld allows you to instantly drop combat and gives you a guaranteed restealth. Find Weakness adds a huge amount of damage, so shadowmelding into a stealth opener can increase your pressure significantly. You can also use shadowmeld to immune different forms of CC. “Veteran” rogues may remember that if you timed a vanish correctly, you would immune incoming damage, crowd control, etc. The new vanish doesn’t allow for this, but shadowmeld still works! It takes some practice, but can be very clutch when going for a kill and you cannot stop the enemy from peeling you.

Horde-
Undead – Forsaken is the favorite for the Horde side. Undead rogues have Will of the Foresaken, which gives you an additional way out of Fear, Charm, or Sleep effects (shares a 30 second cooldown with your trinket). Having access to additional way out of fear is incredibly power, particularly in Cataclysm, as Warlocks are (and have always been) a very strong class. It seems like every comp you go up against has some sort of fear CC. More importantly, nothing beats the look of an undead rogue!

Orc – Orcs have been gaining popularity in Mists of Pandaria. Stuns have become a major threat to Rogues, ie. Shockwave and Deep Freeze. The stun reduction passive increases our survivability quite nicely. Blood Fury gives Rogues an On-Use damage buff that awards an additional 4514 attack power. This additional damage syncs up very well with the burst-oriented play style of Rogues.

Rogue Specs and Talent Choices (Coming Soon)

With the release of 5.0.4, the backstab vs. hemo spec section became obsolete. As this is a sticky, I do not wish to post any opinion specs or talents. I will wait for more data before suggesting any specs or talent choices. Hold tight!

Why is my damage so low?
There are a couple common mistakes rogues make when it comes to damage output. The first thing that you have to realize is that rogue damage is very burst-oriented. Other classes are able to dish out good amounts of damage seemingly all the time, but we rogues have to pick our kill window and unload on a target quickly using our strong damage cooldowns. Here are a few tips that will help with this:

Get your damage buffs up (ie. Rupture/Garrote/Crimson Tempest bleed and Slice & Dice) – Slice & Dice gives you additional energy regeneration via the Energetic Recovery talent, so it is very important that this buff is rolling prior to your burst/dance attempts. Slice & Dice is also a great damage boost, as the attack speed increase does add up to significant damage over time. Rupture, Crimson Tempest or Garrote activate our Sanguinary Veins talent, which is a 25% damage increase! It is very important that you maintain a bleed dot on your current kill target for maximum pressure.

Energy Pooling – This is something all rogues must monitor constantly. Energy is a very scarce resource. Although it regenerates a lot faster than, say mana, I find that it is much more of a limiting factor. You can burn through an entire energy bar in just a few globals, even when you are at full energy. This is why pooling your energy before a burst attempt is so important. Make sure you are at full (or near full) energy before popping shadow dance. This will lead to much more damage, as you will be able to ambush your opponent multiple times before having to wait for energy to recover.

NOTE - Energy pooling isn’t something you should only do around burst attempts either. If you are constantly sitting at sub 30 energy spamming hemo or backstab as soon as you have enough energy, you won’t have enough energy to kick a healers cast, or gouge an incoming ability. Try and get into the habit of playing with some energy left in the tank constantly throughout a match. Damage is great, but rogues bring so much control and other utility to the table as well. Make sure you have enough yellow stuff to take advantage of it.

Find Weakness - The 70% armor penetration awarded by this ability increases your damage output by a significant margin, regardless of which class you're hitting. If you can manage to apply find weakness prior to a kill attempt, you'll notice a significant increase in damage dealt. An ideal situation would be if you are able to time FW with one of your partner's damage enhancing abilities.

Your opener as a rogue will often dictate how the rest of the match will play out. How you should open will vary greatly depending on what composition the enemy team is playing along with your own team’s make up. When the gates open, you will have to make a quick decision as to whether you are going to try and control their opener, or if you should open hard on them to get them to play defensively. In either scenario, GET A SAP ON ONE OF THEM. Sap makes your opener a 2v3, adding significant “pressure” to your opener.

Aggressive/Hard Open-

Pre Open - If you are looking to put the opposing team on the defensive right away, many rogues like to use premeditation into Slice & Dice while still in stealth before opening. The added energy regeneration from Slice & Dice (Energetic Recovery talent) adds significant damage to your opener and frees up a global cooldown for additional damage/stuns/silences while you are digging into your kill target. Obviously you aren’t the only person trying to do damage at this point (this is all from 3v3 perspective btw), so giving your partner Tricks of the Trade will also add significant pressure to your opener (+15% damage boost to your teammate). Typically I will tricks my partner as soon as the gate opens (the buff lasts 30 seconds).

When you and your partner are both ready to open, most rogues will either garrote or cheap shot their target.

Cheap shot is a great way to ensure that your target stays in one place and does not use Line of Sight against your partner. If, for example, your kill target is positioned near a pillar and mounted, it may be a good idea to use a cheap shot so he doesn’t just run away from you or your partner. The downside to opening with cheap shot is the shared diminishing returns with Kidney Shot. In a Cheap Shot opener, I typically use this “rotation.” Cheap Shot – Rupture – Shadow Dance – Ambush x2 – Eviscerate/Kidney Shot – Ambush – Pool Energy and try for a Garrote (if caster) or an additional Ambush as the stun ends. If your 2pt Rupture does NOT return 25 energy from the Relentless Strikes talent, you may want to drop one of the Ambushes from the Rotation in favor of a 1/2 Cheap Shot to prolong the stun lock. It is far more important to lock your target out than trying to do a bit more damage in many situations (after all, most of your damage is done by your teammate!). Using smoke bomb here can also add a ton of pressure provided the enemy healer isn’t already in a CC or isn’t stacked up on your kill target.

Garrote, when glyphed, silences your target for 4.5 seconds, which you can follow up with a kidney shot for a total lockout period of 10.5 seconds. Your target will still be able to move, so it may be wise to shiv your target after the garrote to ensure crippling poison is applied. From here, pool energy to 100%, land your kidney shot as the Garrote silence ends and pop shadow dance to start the pain train (be sure to apply Rupture once the Garrote bleed falls off).

It is very important that you try to coordinate off CC on the enemy that has the best chance of peeling your shadow dance. If you get feared/poly’d/etc. after you’ve popped shadow dance, the enemy team will be in good shape to recover and turn the tides against you. Ensure that you take any precautions you can to protect yourself from peels when dancing.

Defensive Openers-

Against certain compositions that are very burst oriented, you will most likely want to outlast your opponents offensive cooldowns and then counter pressure after the threat to you or your teammates has subsided. In these situations, your main goal will be to prevent both of the enemy dps classes from connecting with their kill target at the same time. Rogues have many control abilities in their arsenal, including Cheap Shot, Kidney Shot, Garrote, Dismantle, Gouge, Blind, Sap, and Crippling Poison. The effectiveness of these abilities varies depending on the class you are dealing with. The best advice I can give is to learn what each class has to counter each of your CC mechanics so you can maximize the time they are stuck away from their target.

Originally Posted by Rugmouse

An example – Death Knights have Anti-Magic Shell, which will wipe crippling poison and prevent it from being applied, along with Icebound Fortitude, which they can use to remove any stun effect and makes them immune for a duration. These two forms of CC lose some of their effectiveness against Death Knights (they can still be used to “bait” them into using these abilities though!). Blind, Sap, Dismantle, and Gouge are the abilities that maintain their full potential against DKs, so the only way out for a DK would be a trinket. You can counter Icebound Fortitude with Gouge, as it is considered an Incapacitate and IBF does not protect against incapacitate abilities. Death Knights are also the only melee class that does not have any sort of disarm duration reduction mechanic, so they will have to eat the full 10 second Dismantle unless they trinket!

What you are looking to do is to force enemy trinkets and cooldowns BEFORE YOU SHADOW DANCE. Many of these types of games will be over before your shadow dance cooldown has expired, so wasting a dance + smokebomb on a target that still has a way out could cost you the match. Once cooldowns have been used, Redirect a Kidney Shot over to the target and pop your shadow dance and hurt them. Be sure your teammate can also connect to the target. You NEED to force them defensive at this point. You can only peel for so long before the enemy team connects and decimates you or a teammate.

Here is a link to another thread I created that attempts to outline the effectiveness of each of our peeling abilities for every class:

The art of Energy Pooling is probably the most important skill a rogue must learn to be successful. It is something I focus on every single time I enter a PVP environment and I still haven’t even come close to mastering it.

Early on in an encounter, I like to build combo points slowly and get my damage buffs rolling (Rupture and slice & dice). Subtlety Rogues have the Honor Among Thieves passive, which generates combo points on critical strikes party-wide when in combat, so I like to weave a few ‘passive’ combo points awarded from HaT into my active combo point builders.

For example – I’ll Premeditation Cheap Shot an enemy, allow HaT to proc my 5th combo point -> Slice & Dice(**Rupture – not sure which will be best to start with in new patch) -> Backstab/Hemo -> HaT proc -> Backstab/Hemo -> Backstab/Hemo -> HaT proc -> Rupture (S&D) -> etc. Having the discipline to wait for HaT procs will actually be extremely helpful for you, as you’ve basically pooled your energy without excessive downtime. This may seem like a slow moving process, but using this approach also leaves you with enough energy for having the option to kick, gouge, or stun your enemy if the situation calls for it. Less ability spam leads to more opportunities to adapt!

Here is another scenario in which energy management plays an important role: When in an arena setting, I like to get to around 3-4 combo points and ask my partner if he’ll be ready to burst soon. If he’s ready, I’ll have built up another combo point from HaT, I’ll tricks him, HaT proc, full Kidney -> Dance. I also find that energy pooling allows me to expand my overall battle awareness - Don’t just watch your energy bar fill up! Is the enemy healer in range for a blind before we burst? Can I shiv a nearby enemy, so it is harder for him/her to peel my burst attempt? These sort of things come to the forefront when you’re not tunneling on an enemy’s health bar.

When is it appropriate to spend all your energy? I like to dump my energy into my target during Shadow Dance (the obvious one) along with when Find Weakness is up (maybe due to a vanish swap, or a coordinated hard opener with my teammate at the start of an arena match). When Find Weakness is not on a target, rogue sustained pressure is quite low, so spamming a bunch of abilities will really be counter-productive.

Letting HaT do its job really helps in terms of energy pooling. Allow those passive combo points to pop up and you’ll see a dramatic difference in terms of being able to burst as soon as you see the opportunity.

Well written, quickly read through it - noticed one error with the viable comps, you said "Ret/DK/healer" - I'm assuming you mean "Rogue/DK/healer". No biggie, but might confuse people coming here for advice :)

Updated with some General Rogue contributor videos that I think every rogue should watch and some opener advice. If anyone has any suggestions on a subject I haven't covered, or some critiques on what I've got so far, let me know!

Can you add a link to the specs you use for both Backstap and Hemo please?

Added a couple links for the most common talent choices for each spec. For some reason, Glyph of Backstab is showing up twice for the BS spec when I try to make the link from the WoW website. One of them should be Glyph of Shadow Dance. I'll try again later